Executive Recruitment Quotes

The best buy by way of management is brains-at any price.

As entrepreneurs, we often get pressured into hiring an industry executive. While it's good to hire people with experience, it can also be a stumbling block because they think about the business the same way everyone else does.

When a company seeks a new chief executive officer, or a university a new vice-chancellor, enormous trouble is taken to find the best person.

Don't be afraid of developing a contrarian viewpoint on what type of person is perfect for your company as CTO and how you're going to find that person.

I love picking people. I started Blackstone, and we had no people, and now we have with our portfolio companies about 750,000 people all over the world. Everybody who is at a senior level has ultimately been picked by me.

This is more than just having a vision. You can see the difference in the often-cited way in which Steve Jobs brought in John Sculley to take over Apple. At the time, Sculley was destined to be the head of Pepsico. The clincher came when Jobs asked him, "How many more years of your life do you want to spend making colored water when you can have an opportunity to come here and change the world?"

Accountability is a two way street. We can't just make it easier for us to fire people; we must make it easier for us to hire people. It takes VA an average of 240 days to complete the hiring process for executives joining VA from outside government. We are losing talented people because it simply takes too long.

Great companies have been reduced by hiring executives that don't work out.

If somehow a proclamation were made that C.E.O.'s could only make a maximum of $300,000 a year, you would not have any shortage of very qualified men and women seeking the jobs.

The captains of industry are not hunting money. America is heavy with it. They are seeking brains - specialized brains - and faithful, loyal service. Brains are needed to carry out the plans of those who furnish the capital.

We don't train executives, we find them. If a mountain stands up like Everest, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that it's a high mountain.

For corporations to be bedfellows with the arts is good business for both. The architecture that houses a company is a more visible statement than the president's in the annual report. Ditto interiors, particularly of offices and sometimes, dramatically, in plants. For solvent businesses, support of community cultural undertakings in music, drama, dance creates great goodwill. Also, the existence of such activities is often important to the executives and their families that companies want to keep or attract to keep.